Hmmm. Most of the lies that hit me hardest came from my dad, and eventually I got jaded. Some of you saw recents posts by me in my blog; it's pretty evident I have a hard time letting myself depend on others for things. Even when people mean well, they haven't followed through for me in a lot of ways; I learned that promises weren't really promises, and it's not even on purpose or malicious sometimes, life itself is transient and things change and thus people's commitments change.

Some of the things my dad lied about?

He said he wasn't cheating on my mom, but he was.

He said he wasn't drinking (pretty standard litany for him) but he typically was. (The last time he lied to me about that was in 2006, after his near death from alcohol, and that was the last time I asked him because I didn't want to be part of the drama anymore.)

Lots of little lies over the years, over the most insignificant and stupid things. he lied even when it would have been easier to be honest. [What's ironic is that he didn't really lie in his profession, he was pretty honest there; he just lied in his personal life.]

The most profound lie that crossed his lips was the day I came out to my parents and he said he loved me unconditionally, and within 24 hours he was drunk, I was on his shitlist, and our relationship never recovered. From Feb 2009 until the day he died last month, he never talked to me again in any form, even when we spent a whole day around each other at my son's graduation this past summer. He died without ever communicating again with me.

But he made a habit of lying, not just to me, but to others and even to himself. I don't think he knew which was up when he finally passed, his world and truth was a muddled mess.

“Pleasure to me is wonder—the unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability. To trace the remote in the immediate; the eternal in the ephemeral; the past in the present; the infinite in the finite; these are to me the springs of delight and beauty.” ~ H.P. Lovecraft

so dogs sit, god sits, god lies, dogs lie, and now lies lie to give us truth (also now dogs can lie while lie'ing and stand while standing, sit while standing, standing while sitting, sit and lie, lie and sit..)

even if someone lied to one, one would still hear the truth

If you see Eve, tell her I'm growing tired of walking the ends of the earth in trying to tell her no

Alternating between acknowledging I was different, while at the same time trying to get me to fit in. What was I supposed to believe? As a child that contradiction leaves scars for a long time. Not to mention being told "You are very intelligent" I can't really be angry at them for that though, parents love their children, (most of the time at least), so the blindness was to be expected, but the expectation was crushing and the harshness of apparent reality was like razors to the brain.

The worst lies of all have to be ones I have told myself. Chief among them being the one I told and sometimes have to be wary of telling myself: That I have enough time. That lie allowed me to justify my inaction and lack of ambition for so long.

Now I'm really starting to feel the backlash from it's pernicious influence. The other lies centre around pride and self-delusion. Like refusing to plan for things because I always thought I was better in the moment and refusing the help of others out of paranoia and an insistence on self-reliance, despite the galling evidence that I have had much more help than many and usually need it.

I'm so glad those last lies were revealed to me fairly early on, unlike the first one I mentioned. Still damage is damage and it comes as little surprise that the worst liar in my life is myself.

'One of (Lucas) Cranach's masterpieces, discussed by (Joseph) Koerner, is in it's self-referentiality the perfect expression of left-hemisphere emptiness and a precursor of post-modernism. There is no longer anything to point to beyond, nothing Other, so it points pointlessly to itself.' - Iain McGilChrist

Suppose a tree fell down, Pooh, when we were underneath it?"
"Suppose it didn't," said Pooh, after careful thought.
Piglet was comforted by this.
- A.A. Milne.